Containers for beverages such as milk, cream, other dairy products, juices, and the like are conventionally constructed from thermoplastic coated paperboard. One type of these containers includes a top end closure with a folded gable roof having a vertically projecting seal at the roof ridge for sealing the container and providing a pouring spout when the contents of the container are to be dispensed. Stacking of such containers requires the use of separating trays intermediate different layers due to the vertically projecting seals of their top end closures. Hence, storage space is lost in stacking these containers due to the empty space resulting from the configuration of the top end closure. Such containers are shown by U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,116,002 and 3,270,940. Another type of container includes flat top end closures that are folded and have a flat seal projecting from a centerline of the closure with an outer end that is releasably secured to the rest of the closure generally adjacent one of its sides. Various releasable securements are provided for releasing the flat seals to permit them to be opened and to thereby provide a pouring spout for dispensing the beverages. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,869,078 and 3,892,347 disclose such flat top end closures. A further type of container is disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 4,078,715, issued Mar. 14, 1978, and includes a top end closure with an inclined seal that includes a "harder crease" on one side of the seal for facilitating folding of the seal from a vertical position to the inclined position.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,012,997 and 4,093,115 disclose a container folding method and the container made by the method wherein certain roof panels of the top end closure are provided with double score lines extending alongside each other. Folding of a top seal of the end closure from a vertical position to a flat position requires the application of a downward force along the lower double score line on one side of the top seal and the application of another force to bend the top seal downwardly. Each additional application of force for folding the top end closure requires an additional folding tool on the folding mechanism.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,206,867 discloses a blank suitable for the formation therefrom of a gable, slant or flat top container. The blank includes wide, lowered score lines formed on the side of the container toward which the top seal is slanted; the front and back gables are triangular in shape and the apices thereof are not geometrically centered.
It is desirable to provide a multi-use container and blank for constructing same, wherein the front and back gable arrangements are geometrically correct constructions, thereby enhancing the probability of being accurately sealed regardless of how the top closure score lines are broken during the forming process on various models of forming, filling and sealing machines. It is further desirable to provide such blanks which lend themselves to substantially perfect nesting of adjacent top closure arrangements across conventional paperboard rolls, to thereby eliminate scrap therebetween and, thus effectuate substantial paperboard savings.